a dog barks to start a fight with bubba
and he gets
mean like an ant who's
sugars' been stolen and I tell him
             that's an ugly dog
when ugly people populate the planet, I get mad,
but I don't bite their heads off.
                                        He got really calm after that
and I waved at a gardener
as if to say,
                   'It's okay,
                                   it won't happen again.'

It's Friday night,
a still blue dark eyed sky
a band plays

It's years removed from the time I wrote about
the bells and how they swing
in the tower to my left
I still hear them
how they cling cling BANG
and I am with you
and I am alone
                          tomorrow is coming
and in two years I'll be here with the bells

cling cling BOOM

and there will be a woman or a man
sipping on coffee
or speaking
                    softly,    and the bells
                                                        
cl­­ing cling BANG

I walked into a sandwich shop with a woman who believed in meditation and growling at the dirt in the desert. We saw a well dressed black man and we were 5,280 miles away from him, but he had a nice suit, so I said so.

In the wasteland of my mind
an idea like a tumbleweed
interrupts the landscape.

space folds around its pointed form

time scatters like mice before its untethered gait

as it makes its way
to the bright center of the barren mound it was born to,
leaving no stretch of its path unchanged,
intruding upon the atmosphere's stubborn scarcity
                  with the fullness of a growl
darting from the mouth of a shapeless traveler
forced upon the world through birth.

Howling with the bittersweet memory of the womb, calling out for its home in the stars.

Reaching the mound
it lights up with the flame of intention
and seizing its grasp on action,
finds its way to the mouth

and in telling you how I love you

       the silence swallows it whole

                  when you don't say a thing.

I woke up to screams from a stolen razor.   
Where is it?  
It was a loud scream.          
The end comes swiftly,
anyway,
and,
if there are no razors around,
it comes even faster.                        
 
At the top of the mountain,
the anger flows to the valley,
and there is no scream.                                  
In the valley, we wait.                
There is a pull from a cigarette.                               
Small talk that is not small talk.                                        
A man wheezes   
A woman wonders where she'll go tomorrow                                          
it comes out as a laugh
                  and lightly in the background plays a song that can only be called the disease of the 80's.                                       
 
We didn't need another.                                     

But, thank you.

I sit here again
with a beer and a cigarette
communing with a lost soul
my own?
    someone else's?
I read scripture and the
words dance around me
a thousand flights of fancy
on the page
my incense burning
this pure incense burning
this pure understanding
of the cruel nature
of humanity
of friends, heroes, lovers
I write it all down
try to solve it
it stands before me
a picture of my steps
to this point
I have reached the point
of unabashed unregulated
distorted reality
my daily life
the breathing
the eating
the sleeping
it doesn't seem any more real
than this life I live
in my head
or somewhere in my heart
and I long to touch the
part of me that is real
but I am so disconnected

flowers in the winter still grow towards the sun
and such is my soul
leaning leaning
toward the everlasting source
                                                     reality fails me
and lights go dim
and I cause the moon to glow for a light
somewhere in this dark night
                                                  and I can't stop believing in a God that doesn't exist
                      but which pushes further down this tunnel into the hell
of my eternity
and I can't
find simplicity
can't find purity
it's all convoluted
I hate the game
   shifting pulling
begging for release
and somehow I am
an ember in a fire
bent on burning out
forever
and I have a soul
I have a heart
someone acknowledge me in this newspaper grey world
I am flat lining
where will I go after
this life has sloughed off my skin
I know I am endless
and I am bound for a world
where opinion doesn't taint reason
                            and somehow
                            I will be there
                            where the sky meets space
                            I will be there
                                                   somehow.

I stepped into your apartment
I saw you reading
  sipping coffee
I saw you go to the fridge
and muse at its emptiness
I slept with you at night
we dreamed together
        you didn't see me
but I was there
       when I went to leave in the morning
you looked up
         quizzically